Editors' Review

Online sellers, small-business owners, retailers, auctioneers, and collectors will want to take a look at Catalog Creator. It's a free tool for designing, filling, printing, and posting catalogs, brochures, and similar documents in print, online, and on CD-ROM. It offers a wide range of customizable templates for creating colorful catalogs and an efficient means for displaying lots of wares, up to thousands of items. It's compatible with Microsoft Office features, too.

Catalog Creator, or CatCreator, has a unique interface based around a Main Menu with clearly marked buttons that open new pages for their functions and settings. Clicking Exit in any of CatCreator's pages returns you to the Main Menu, or you can click Previous Page. The Main Menu has a link to a handy online tutorial and a PDF-based quick start guide as well as several sample inventory entries related to phones. We clicked on Cordless Phones and got a page filled with sample data on what would be our in-stock inventory--part number, SKU, cost, price, and so on--all easily customized via the Page Setup options on the Template tool's dialog. You can select between a spreadsheet-like Data View for quick checks and an Inventory option that displays individual items, including pictures. We created a new catalog, which involves choosing a template, making changes in the Page Setup editor, selecting options like categories, entering or populating data, and saving it for printing or posting. The results were more than acceptable, even for our simple project. We were impressed by the option to import XLS inventory files, especially by the Data Mapping option, which offers more than 20 selectable fields for specifying exactly what to import; for instance, price but not part number. It even has six custom fields. Append and Update buttons let you add and update data instantly.

CatCreator is easy to use and cannot only help you create and publish attractive, professional-quality catalogs and brochures but also manage your inventory through its database features. It's free, too, which the bottom line loves.

Publisher's Description

Catalog Creator is software which was designed to help you make print catalogs and brochures, catalogs on CD-ROM, on-line catalogs and even an e-commerce site. This unique "Data Table" format allows you to efficiently display thousands of items in a wide range of customizable templates.

You need to visit the publisher's site to get the correct version.
The software is not free - As with most professional software, it is free-to-try.

Summary

The version you download here will probably work on your PC. However, you should try to match the version with your installed copy of MS Office.
Also, Catalog Creator is available in both 32 and 64-bit. Again, to match your version of MS Office. If you have a 32-bit version of MS Office installed on your PC but install a 64-bit version of Catalog Creator, the software may display an error message on startup.

The software builds a catalog directly from a spreadsheet. True, the spreadsheet must be formatted in a specific manner but after that I only ever need to work in Excel to update it. Incredibly simple.

I have to disagree with previous comments about having to contact Tech Support to have a template created. I found the template editor to be very easy to use - just drag-and-drop.Finally, all of the negative comments are about the price. No, its not free but after looking around, its the most affordable software of its kind. If someone comes into my shop, I expect to be paid for the work I do so I don't mind paying for software.

Cons

I should have read the reviews first. As stated, the software you download from CNET is not the correct one. Looking at that screenshot, the one here is 5 years out of data. Get the newest one from the actual website.

E-mail This Review

Thank You, !

Report Offensive Content

If you believe this comment is offensive or violates the CNET's Site Terms of Use, you can report it below (this will not automatically remove the comment). Once reported, our staff will be notified and the comment will be reviewed.